Lead hardness testing

[My 3 Sons]

I’ve seen Lee’s tester for about $80 but I’m trying to control costs. How do you test your lead for the proper hardness?

[Shane P]

I’ve seen Lee’s tester for about $80 but I’m trying to control costs. How do you test your lead for the proper hardness?

I got mine cheaper but I'm prime amazon so I didn't have to pay shipping. I think 62 bucks. I don't know of any other way.

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[Wes Sage]

My dad and I used to do the tummb nail test.
Cast them, run your thumbnail across the base. if you could dig in, it was too soft.
Sounds cheesy, but worked for us for a lot of years.
There is a BB test you can do, but it takes some getting used to without a pressure meter

[Iron369]

I just bought a used Lee tester for $45. Just got it today and haven’t used it yet.

[Iron369]

Lots of people use a pencil hardness test. Google it.

[Shane P]

My dad and I used to do the tummb nail test.
Cast them, run your thumbnail across the base. if you could dig in, it was too soft.
Sounds cheesy, but worked for us for a lot of years.
There is a BB test you can do, but it takes some getting used to without a pressure meter

What was your exact technic for clean barrels of lead fowling again.

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[Wes Sage]

A copper bore brush in the proper caliber.
Then get some Chore Boy Scrubber pads, cut a 2"x2" square, wrap it over the top of your bore brush.
10 passes and all the lead is gone!!

https://www.midlandhardware.com/2825...0%7C%20%241.02

What was your exact technic for clean barrels of lead fowling again.

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[davet]

I’ve seen Lee’s tester for about $80 but I’m trying to control costs. How do you test your lead for the proper hardness?

I came across this method for testing the hardness of lead on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfsE...LOGZh6okRSgnK9

It only take a set of art pencils that are $7 on Amazon. There is a chart available and depending on what pencil will scratch the lead you can determine the hardness of the lead. The wheel weights I melted down were in the hardness range I thought they should be doing the pencil test but I would really like to see the results of a pencil test compared to an actual hardness tester to see how accurate the pencils are.

[Reloader762]

I’ve seen Lee’s tester for about $80 but I’m trying to control costs. How do you test your lead for the proper hardness?

Me and a buddy that cast together bought a Lee tester a few years ago, before that I cast / shot bullets for years without one. I pretty much knew what I had lead wise as it was either pure lead, wheel weights, Lino or Mono type lead and knowing roughly the BHN of those alloys it was pretty easy to mix up a batch of alloy to cast the desired range of BHN I was looking for. Water quenching or heat treating certain lead alloy has predictable results as well, but if you don't know what you have to begin with it's hard to know what your going to end up with.

Some good reference material.
http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

Lead alloy calculator, works with any EXCEL spreadsheet program. I've found the final BHN to be fairly close when using the spreadsheet to mix up different alloys.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/atta...4&d=1341560870

[Andyt2]

Pencil test works well